“The proliferation of MEAs, and the resulting fragmentation of international environmental institutions, is often described as one of the key challenges of GEG.”

“The very ability of GEG to address complex interconnected environmental threats is questioned because the incoherent system of solutions is becoming even more complex than the problems it was meant to address.”

“States, especially developing countries, struggle to meet institutional demands as the number of institutions increases. Participation in GEG represents a challenge for all states, especially developing countries, which use very scarce resources to participate in negotiations and meetings, and to satisfy reporting requirements and other MEA demands.”

In this chapter we take the six key areas of concern that were identified earlier and analyze each of them in greater depth to determine the extent of the challenge and the emerging trends in terms of how it is being managed. We are particularly interested in figuring out just how important each of these challenges is and which actions, among the actions that are already being taken, are most effective in responding to the concerns.

Some of these challenges are, in fact, endemic to the international system and not specific only to global environmental governance. However, each has a potentially important impact on the future of GEG. The remainder of this chapter will diagnose each of the following six challenges: (a) proliferation of MEAs and fragmentation of GEG; (b) lack of cooperation and coordination among international organizations; (c) lack of implementation, enforcement and effectiveness in GEG; (d) inefficient use of resources; (e) GEG outside the environmental arena; and (f) non-state actors in a state-centric system.

Challenge #1. Proliferation of MEAs and Fragmentation of GEG

The proliferation of MEAs, and the resulting fragmentation of international environmental institutions, is often described as one of the key challenges of GEG. The rapid growth of environmental agreements, MEA-related instruments and geographically dispersed institutions has left environmental governance in disarray. There are inconsistencies in rules and norms, and the hectic pace of activities can overwhelm and financially drain some, particularly the poorest, countries.

All of this feeds into the concerns that the GEG system is operating at a suboptimal level: its agreements, institutions and resources are unable to achieve their full potential and possible synergies remain unexploited. The very ability of GEG to address complex interconnected environmental threats is questioned because the incoherent system of solutions is becoming even more complex than the problems it was meant to address.

Diagnosis

Five interrelated concerns are often identified as parts of the MEA proliferation problem. They are: treaty congestion; institutional fragmentation; states’ struggle to meet institutional demands; duplication and conflicting agendas in GEG; and the diminishing role of science in GEG. However, there are also some positive aspects of proliferation and fragmentation that also need to be acknowledged.

Treaty congestion[1] is a common description of the state of GEG as there are more than 500 MEAs registered with the UN, including 61 atmosphere-related; 155 biodiversity-related; 179 related to chemicals, hazardous substances and waste; 46 land conventions; and 196 conventions that are broadly related to issues dealing with water.[2] It is argued that the large number of MEAs creates messiness, incoherence and confusion in GEG, and incites demands for order and central decision-making authority. However, the three-digit MEA number may be misleading as it does not acknowledge that many of the MEAs are institutionally linked, e.g., come clustered in institutional packages like The Law of the Sea or are protocols nested under the same framework convention. Furthermore, many are regional in nature, only some MEAs have the full support of the international community and/or binding provisions that go beyond reporting requirements. There has also been a tendency to assume that the autonomy of legal agreements implies autonomy of secretariats. This has led to an institutional congestion that is actually more disturbing than MEA proliferation. As a result, MEA secretariats have developed an institutional interest in further expansion of their work. Even more disturbing is the proliferation of new subsidiary bodies and ad hoc working groups within MEAs.[3] It is these that eventually clutter and overwhelm the MEA negotiating calendar and can eventually distract from actual implementation. One should note here that there is a distinction to be made between the more recent post-Rio conventions that are still in their formative stages and the more established older conventions that tend to be far more focused and circumscribed in their substantive and institutional ambitions.

Institutional and policy fragmentation takes place as separate conventions address related environmental threats, while convention secretariats become geographically dispersed and operate in different political, normative and geographical contexts.[4] For example, while it is widely recognized that there is a complex system of interrelated cause-and-effect chains among climate, biodiversity, desertification, water and forestry, each responding convention has its own defined objects and commitments that fragment institutional commitments and create artificial issue barriers.[5] Moreover, the institutional arrangements that have the ability to establish better coordination and synergies, tend to be geographically dispersed. Climate and Desertification Secretariats are in Bonn, the Biodiversity Secretariat is in Montreal, CITES in Geneva, etc. Whether reorganization of the system and eventual clustering based on issues/themes, governance functions or location can improve GEG is continuously discussed. Most seem to believe that such clustering will be beneficial, and some headway is already being made. Such clustering could also have significant financial benefits. For example, a rough estimate of the cost-efficiency gains of hosting seven biodiversity-related convention COPs back-to-back could be more than US$50 million.[6] However, significant practical and political hurdles remain in making this a reality.

States, especially developing countries, struggle to meet institutional demands as the number of institutions increases. Participation in GEG represents a challenge for all states, especially developing countries, which use very scarce resources to participate in negotiations and meetings, and to satisfy reporting requirements and other MEA demands.[7] Overstretched human and financial resources needed for global governance leave developing countries with fewer resources for implementation or to mitigate environmental threats of most concern to them. Harmonizing national reporting on biodiversity-related conventions has been pursued, but the process has been difficult and given the structure of the “harmonized” process, it remains unclear exactly how it improves the implementation of conventions at the national level or saves national resources.[8]

Duplication and conflicting agendas occur because new treaties often tend to be negotiated from scratch and have different stakeholders than the pre-existing MEAs. Building upon previous treaties in the similar issue-area or making sure that the new treaty smoothly fits into the current system is not necessarily a priority for negotiators. Furthermore, as MEAs are a product of time- and energy-consuming multilateral negotiations,[9] their text is frequently left ambiguous or unclear from the operational perspective, or simply does not represent a common body of law. For example, while both CITES and CBD have a conservation focus; in practice they put a different emphasis on preservation and sustainable living. Similarly, while the Montreal Protocol proposed HFCs as alternatives to CFCs, they were considered greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol, sending opposite policy signals to countries that had signed both agreements. Finally, the proliferation of international courts and tribunals raises a concern about multiple tribunals addressing the same dispute without adequate rules for dealing with overlapping jurisdiction,[10] e.g., the International Court of Justice or the Law of the Sea Tribunal. Eventual overlaps between the environment and trade have been under consideration at the Doha round of WTO negotiations.

The role of science in GEG is diminishing because of the proliferation of MEAs and fragmentation of GEG and the difficulties of coordination. Namely, science needs to be credible and to cross political barriers to influence policy, while its own influence decreases as it is spread thin through multiple scientific bodies, each looking at a small piece of the environment puzzle rather than looking at the larger picture of interconnections. International policies for managing the global atmosphere are a case in point: science clearly calls for a comprehensive policy response, while the existing approach is highly dysfunctional, as it locks policies in sub-issue specific solutions.[11] The force of scientific arguments has reemerged through integrated assessments like the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Still, without authoritative science—including relevant expertise from both developed and developing countries—and clear avenues for knowledge to influence policy processes, the role of science in GEG is likely to be further marginalized.

There are, however, positive aspects of proliferation of MEAs that need to be acknowledged. For example:[12]

Visibility and awareness of environmental threats rises with the number of MEAs and more conversations about these threats in multiple forums allow all actors multiple opportunities for action.

Some degree of redundancy is desirable. Duplication can be beneficial as it can be an insurance against institutional decline and makes the system more robust.[13]

Competition can bring about better, more innovative results. As agencies compete for limited funds and attention they are continuously trying to build up their core competencies, reassess and further develop their mandates and improve their performance.

Secretariats develop pockets of expertise and their hosts have the pride of ownership. A positive impact of geographic fragmentation of GEG includes the opportunity for secretariats to evolve into competence centres and form “epistemic communities” that can then push both knowledge and policy.[14] States hosting the secretariats can act as sponsors of agreements (e.g., host contributions through Bonn Fund) and develop a special stake in their success.

Cooperation benefits go beyond environment. Cooperation in the international system is often celebrated per se because it contributes to peace. Environmental cooperation can spill over to other areas of international affairs. The “rule of law” in the international system increases predictability of state relations and established working relationships promote peaceful settlement of eventual disputes.

Numerous entry points for global civil society are provided by a system with many institutions. A reduction or centralization of institutional structures may close some of the windows of opportunity that allow for more meaningful civil society participation in what remains a state-centric system. It may also reduce the ability of small countries to influence global agenda-setting.

Trends

The issue of proliferation and fragmentation has been hotly debated for a number of years. Partly as a result of this debate, some things have begun to change and at least some of the key trends suggest that things are happening—albeit slowly—to respond to this challenge.

Proliferation and fragmentation may be slowing because of negotiation fatigue and as international environmental law matures. The problem of MEA proliferation and fragmentation is largely a result of the evolving system of international environmental law and its explosive growth between the Stockholm and Rio conferences. A decrease in the rate of emergence of new conventions in the late 1990s has sometimes been described as “negotiation fatigue.”[15] Struggling to meet current MEA obligations, states become less interested in creating new MEAs. Thus, the GEG system may be beginning to regulate its own growth. As international environmental law matures there is also a trend towards relatively more sophistication of instruments, including:[16] enlargement in the scope of agreements (treating entire ecosystems rather than particular species, and treating global rather than transboundary pollution); moving focus from liability for harm towards prevention; increasing the use of detailed procedural and substantive requirements; and establishing innovative legislative and regulatory mechanisms (provisional application pending full ratification, moving beyond unanimity).

Treaties are recognizing the problem. The three “Rio MEAs” (climate, biodiversity and desertification) have all come to recognize the problem of fragmentation and advocate synergistic approaches. They call for greater information exchange and recognize the issue connections and there is even movement towards joint meetings of their scientific bodies. This is a useful step, but certainly not enough.

Some proactive treaty secretariats reaching out to coordinate. Some proactive parts of the system are beginning to respond to the problem. For example, the Ramsar Bureau has taken a number of steps towards establishing linkages with other instruments—including the CBD, Convention on Migratory Species, CCD, CITES, World Heritage Convention, etc.—in recognition of the overlaps and cooperation needed for implementation. These are still early steps and mostly focused around information exchange. However, theoretically, these could be a model for better interaction between multiple treaties. Importantly, the questions remain: Is this form of informational exchange enough? Would other, larger, secretariats have the incentive or interest to follow Ramsar’s lead?

Some promising efforts towards clustering conventions are taking place. Ambitious clustering efforts have been undertaken by treaties relating to chemicals management. Clustering of three conventions is being pursued by the secretariats of the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.[17] The expected end result is a coherent legal framework to support environmentally sound management of hazardous chemicals and wastes through their whole lifecycle, including production, use, trade and disposal. The short-term clustering focus is enhanced by programmatic and functional cooperation (capacity-building, science and technology, legal affairs, institutional matters, monitoring and reporting, information and awareness-raising) and longer-term measures would include integration of program support services and developing common services within the chemicals/wastes cluster and also with other co-located Convention secretariats or UNEP units. A significant milestone in the process was the decision to appoint a joint head of the secretariats of both the Stockholm and Rotterdam conventions.[18] Another significant aspect of chemicals management is the recent global agreement on a Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM).[19] However, the clustering experiment is also showing that the process is going to be far from easy. For example, as of September 2005, the parties to the Rotterdam Convention concluded that no further action could take place without more detailed identification of financial and administrative arrangements.[20] That, possibly, is where the rubber will hit the road.

Assessment

As we look at other parts of the international system we find that issues of proliferation of instruments and actors and fragmentation of final response have been often discussed in human rights, humanitarian aid, and peace-building communities.[21] The very existence of multiple international institutions is not necessarily a problem because it gives actors within the system multiple opportunities to articulate values they hold in common. Multiplicity of institutions becomes a problem when institutions siphon off resources towards institutional maintenance rather than implementation, or when they begin coming in each other’s way because of duplication or working at cross-purposes.

The problem of proliferation and fragmentation within the GEG system is sometimes overemphasized by those who want to have a system governed or controlled from the top down. In the past this has led to calls for grand “super-organizations” for the environment. This approach is dangerous because it calls for mechanical fixes that themselves have no guarantee of working, and where the failure of that single super-organization could spell disaster for the entire system. In this light, proliferation provides the current system with a certain resilience to institutional decline. There also seems to be a tacit consensus that all instruments that are present in GEG are needed. Namely, there is no major initiative by a large number of states to remove a particular body of environmental law or deny funding to a particular secretariat to the extent that it would disappear. Finally, it should be noted that, over time, proliferation tends to slow down, especially as treaties mature and move from the negotiation phase into the implementation phase; this may be beginning to happen with the three Rio Conventions.

The central issue in the debate should be whether environmental protection at the international and national levels is supported or undermined by the multiplicity of institutions. To what extent does the diversity of GEG instruments and fragmentation of its institutions help countries address their national environmental priorities by allowing them multiple opportunities to benefit from the GEG system? Furthermore, does this diversity help the system respond to global environmental problems? From this perspective, proliferation of MEAs and fragmentation of GEG should be addressed because they significantly undermine countries’ interests and, by extension, the whole GEG system in three key ways:

Perverse incentives in GEG weaken policy-making. The system has turned into a negotiating system and there is an incentive to keep adding new instruments. Consequently, not enough attention is paid to continuously build upon previous knowledge and existing instruments and institutions. Secretariats have an incentive to strengthen and proliferate within their issue areas and no requirement to prove their efficacy and relevance to the GEG system as a whole.

GEG resource demands leave fewer resources for environmental protection at home. The system extracts a high cost in terms of sapping valuable human resources, particularly from capacity constrained developing countries. While awareness of the problem has been high for years, surprisingly little has been done to rationalize the demands on countries or at least provide evidence of potential savings.

Science as a driver of environmental cooperation is undermined, which decreases countries’ commitment to and the credibility of GEG. To the extent that science does play an important role in individual issue areas, the importance of cross-sectoral knowledge to influence the overall shape of the GEG system is minimized.

Against this background, the most important emerging trends are advances in chemicals management: achieving a global and comprehensive policy response for all types of chemicals, appointing a joint head for conventions as an incentive to achieve synergies and exploring financial savings.

Challenge #2. Lack of Cooperation and Coordination Among International Organizations

Because of its cross-cutting nature, coordination was always an important goal of environmental governance. UNEP was designed to be the coordinator-in-chief; however, from the very beginning, it had to contend with much bigger, better endowed and politically more powerful organizations that had significant environmental impact but no interest and no incentive to be “coordinated” by UNEP which was (and is) one of the youngest and least-endowed of all international organizations. To make matters worse, the Member States have never honestly attempted to give UNEP the political capital or the resources to meet the mandate of coordination they so generously lavished upon it. It is not surprising that some have argued that the Member States, particularly the more powerful ones, have actually wanted UNEP to fail in this particular task.[22] In its original design, the Environment Fund was supposed to give UNEP “clout”—and for as long as there were real resources with UNEP for deployment, it did enjoy influence.

The rapid growth in the number of actors that now impact global environmental governance has made coordination more important, but also more difficult. The creation of the GEF as a main financing mechanism, the various MEA secretariats and the CSD have further detracted from UNEP’s authority and led to fractious turf wars and inter-agency politics.[23] This climate of inter-agency distrust, uneven resource endowments and unclear (and sometimes contradictory) mandates from the Member States, has not been conducive to either institutional cooperation or coordination. The challenge of coordination in policies and implementation lies at the heart of the GEG crisis, as it has led to gaps in international policy, fragmentation of effort and sometimes competing or incoherent decision-making structures.

Diagnosis

The four key issues that are often identified within the coordination cooperation debate are: (a) the overwhelming challenge of coordination both at international and national levels; (b) the weak status and role of UNEP; (c) the lack of authoritative science leading international environmental policy; and (d) the leadership deficit in the GEG.

The sheer number of institutions that affect global environmental governance is bewildering. Let us review just some of the intergovernmental actors involved:

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), created in 1972, is the most immediately associated with GEG as its principal stated mandate is to coordinate environmental programs within the UN and be a catalyst for new initiatives.

The Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), created in 1992, was created to coordinate between the three pillars of sustainable development, through monitoring implementation of Agenda 21 and coordinating the follow-up from the 1992 Rio Summit.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), created in 1965, has a large environmental portfolio and plays a major role in implementing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including reduction of environmental degradation. The UNDP’s country offices play a direct role in GEG through assisting governments with designing institutions and implementing policies to alleviate poverty and improve the environment.

Specialized Agencies within the UN deal with specific environmental issues. For example, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) deals with atmosphere and climate. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is the lead UN agency responsible for assessing the state of global agriculture, forests and fisheries and for promoting sustainable development of resources. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitors nuclear safety and radioactive waste. These organizations are autonomous bodies with their own governance structures, separate political agendas and often much larger budgets than UNEP, and each has pressures of its own to contend with.

International development banks have a large and increasing impact on GEG through their projects and environmental strategies. For example, the requirements of the World Bank Environmental Impact Assessments and other environmental safeguard policies and guidelines often serve as de facto global standards for projects in developing countries. UNEP’s influence over the priorities of a large and powerful organization such as the World Bank is negligible.[24] International environmental financing institutions such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the multilateral fund for the implementation of the Montreal Protocol are not truly governed by UNEP. In fact, the GEF has actively resisted attempts by UNEP to play a stronger role in shaping the GEF’s priorities and programs, even though UNEP is supposed to be one of its three implementing agencies.[25]

An increasing number of environmental issues have now found their way onto the agenda of the World Trade Organization (WTO) either through its rules or its dispute settlement mechanisms. Because countries tend to take trade and trade rules far more seriously than environment and environmental regimes, WTO debates are now becoming important determinants of government action as well as the direction of GEG.

Indeed, GEG coordination seems to be mission impossible. The question is whether it is something even worth trying to do. Given the overwhelming number of organizations influencing global environmental governance, achieving high levels of coordination is not feasible from the start. In fact, even the bodies that are responsible for coordination have been proliferating, with the Environmental Management Group (EMG) and the Global Ministerial Environment Forum (GMEF) the newest additions. The irony is that although there are many institutions, the key players—i.e., the Member States—within all these institutions are the same. The failure of coordination, therefore, has to be seen not just as a failure of the institutions, but as a failure of the “owners” of these institutions: the Member States.

UNEP’s inability to coordinate: politics and institutional weakness. Not only are the actors in GEG complex and myriad, the organization meant to coordinate them, UNEP, is smaller and weaker than just about all the other parts of the system. UNEP is itself fragmented and it can be difficult enough to coordinate its eight divisions; six regional offices; seven liaison offices; seven out-posted offices; six collaborating centres; a number of convention secretariats; and five scientific advisory groups.[26] During the Stockholm negotiations of 1972, there was general agreement that environmental action needed a framework, but countries were deeply divided over the appropriate institutional arrangement. The creation of an environmental super-agency was quickly shot down due to concerns over its cost, its potential impact on sovereignty and existing UN agencies’ fear that they will lose a portion of their budgets, programming or authority. Finally, the only politically acceptable solution was an organization that would “have minimal administration and not compete legally or financially with existing organizations.”[27] So, UNEP was created to “promote international cooperation in the field of the environment and to recommend, as appropriate, policies to this end, and to provide general policy guidance for the direction and coordination of environmental programs within the UN system”[28] and designed in a way that prevented it from fulfilling this mandate. It was, what Konrad von Moltke called, “the organization of the impossible.”[29]

The failure of the policy coordination mandate has been evident since the creation of UNEP: well-established UN agencies working in the field of environment (WHO, FAO, IAEA, WMO, World Bank, GATT/WTO) refuse to be coordinated by the new, weak agency lacking authority. Later, new bodies were established that also did not need to or want to recognize UNEP’s authority (Global Environment Facility and Commission on Sustainable Development) and further weakened UNEP’s role in global environmental policy. Although UNEP has been very successful in catalyzing negotiations on the new MEAs, it has been relatively unsuccessful at coordinating the policies and activities arising from the conventions once they are launched, as conventions become autonomous and often better endowed than UNEP itself.

Several structural features have inhibited UNEP’s ability to realize this impossible mandate:[30] UNEP’s status as a Programme constrains its authority, as it is a subsidiary body of the General Assembly, rather than a separate, autonomous organization; its governance structure allows the needs and demands of Member States to take precedence over its overall mission; UNEP’s financial structure is overly dependent on voluntary contributions and, therefore, unreliable and subject to donor whims; UNEP’s location in Nairobi—the only UN agency to be headquartered in the South—endeared it to the developing countries in its early years and has, in fact, made it far more South-friendly than most international organizations, but it has also bred a certain resistance and hostility from the North and kept it far from the corridors of influence.

The weak connections between science and environmental policy-making. There is no question that sound environmental governance must be based on the best scientific knowledge available. However, there are (a) large knowledge gaps in our understanding of global interactions between environmental processes and impacts,[31] and (b) highly fragmented links between science and existing decision-making structures.[32] The assessment of the global environmental situation and the provision of the most current scientific information on the environment to decision-makers is one of UNEP’s central mandates. Yet, UNEP is not seen as the authoritative scientific or knowledge voice on the environment, even as many other international organizations are in their respective fields (for example, the World Health Organization).

There is, in fact, a lot of good science on the environment. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is generally considered to be a success.[33] UNEP has itself launched a number of initiatives, including the Global Environment Outlook, and the Earthwatch program which was meant to coordinate, harmonize and catalyze environmental monitoring and assessment activities throughout the UN system. The missing link, however, is not a lack of scientific information; rather, it is the lack of synthesis of the information that is available. Such synthesis is key for international policy-making in a number of arenas, but particularly so for the environment because of its interconnected nature. In the current situation, information from multiple sources, gathered in multiple ways, is difficult to compare, is not digestible to policy-makers, does not provide a complete picture of the environmental situation, and often fails to consistently study the same issues and substances over time.[34]

Leadership deficit: “Fire in the belly” needed to improve GEG performance. The question of leadership in global environmental institutions has rarely been discussed in literature. Yet, it may be the most crucial of all issues and probably the one issue that can make a lasting difference. Our focus here is on the individuals who lead institutions or have the ability to influence the directions of institutions. The malaise that the GEG system has been facing in recent years is at least a malaise born out of a leadership deficit. The leadership deficit shows up in two different but related contexts.

First, there is the failure of global leaders to demonstrate the political will and invest the type of political capital that is needed to raise the profile of environmental issues to the appropriate level. While the GEG system has been remarkably successful in hosting high-profile global events, even periodic summits, these have now become routine photo-ops and no longer inspire global action the way they last did at Rio in 1992. More important, as one surveys world politics, it is difficult to identify either individual global leaders of stature or countries who are willing to speak out persistently, boldly and strongly for environmental quality. What one finds, instead, are canned slogans and predictable palliatives. While little can be done about the leadership deficit discussed above, there is another type of leadership deficit about which something can be done. This is the second context—the deficit in leadership within the GEG system. There are, in fact, many strong managers and leaders who head various international environmental institutions (maybe too many), but there is no overall leader willing to speak for and work on behalf of the system as a whole. The result is strong “commanders” trying to wrest as much as they can for their fiefdom, their agency, their program. In essence, a leadership landscape that is more feudal than tribal (since tribal systems actually have high levels of coordination among the chiefs).

The GEG system has been the strongest when it had strong and entrepreneurial leaders who were willing—sometimes ruthlessly—to try to move the system towards bold and new directions. The need is for leaders whose personal ambitions align with the interests of the system as a whole, who know how to use the power of ideas, who are prepared to take risks, and those with a sense of mission and a “fire in their belly.”[35]

The international system is not very good at choosing such leaders for any of its institutions, largely because the Member States, particularly the powerful ones, have little interest in doing so. But because the international community also places environment at a lower priority, maybe it can be pushed to seek more proactive leaders for environmental institutions. Even a few key countries could lead the charge towards selecting leaders for key agencies who are committed to a stronger GEG system, rather than their own fiefdoms. For example, maybe the litmus test to be used in appointing new heads of MEA secretariats should be the commitment of the candidates to rationalize their secretariat’s functions through harmonization, coordination, clustered meetings, etc.

Trends

The prevailing trends in relation to the challenge of coordination and cooperation are not too encouraging. A few important trends are presented here:

UNEP and the Global Environment Facility: A struggling relationship. In 1991, the GEF was formed to fund environmental projects addressing biodiversity loss, climate change, degradation of international waters and depletion of the ozone layer.[36] Rather than placing the GEF under the auspices of UNEP, the GEF was created as an independent financial organization and located in Washington, DC, and was effectively under the control of the World Bank, but with UNDP and UNEP also listed as “implementing agencies.” In spite of UNEP’s key role in international environmental policy formulation, UNEP’s relationship with the GEF has been kept weak and it has been denied the one instrument that could have given it real influence. Attempts on the part of UNEP to play a greater role in shaping the GEF’s priorities have had limited success. UNEP Governing Council decisions have repeatedly called for a strengthened role for UNEP within the GEF, but to little avail.[37]

Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD): An uncertain future. The Rio summit brought the issues of economic growth, social development and the environmental quality under the conceptual umbrella of sustainable development and adopted Agenda 21 as its blueprint for the future. The CSD was created to coordinate between the three pillars of sustainable development: by monitoring the implementation of Agenda 21, and coordinating the follow-up to the Rio summit.[38] In reality, CSD proved relatively ineffective at coordinating cross-sectoral issues and, instead, focused its energies on environmental issues, such as the Forestry Principles, and work on energy and fresh water. Sadly, because it was often populated by “negotiators,” it soon became another negotiation body rather than one focused on implementation. The result was duplication and overlap with UNEP and other institutions, causing larger coordination problems with environmental governance. The trend has been marked by a needless, palpable and dangerous tension between CSD and UNEP because of the unclear division of labour. Coordination difficulties between CSD and UNEP were further compounded by the decision to establish the CSD secretariat in New York instead of Nairobi. The CSD has been unable to deliver on its original mandate (of monitoring Agenda 21 implementation) and on its assumed role (of negotiating decisions that move sustainable development forward). However, it has been quite successful as a model for incorporating multiple stakeholders and in becoming a regular forum where different stakeholders regularly meet, interact, network and exchange ideas. Of all the institutions that are related somehow to the environment, the CSD’s future remains the most uncertain and the disenchantment with its performance is quite broadly based.

Environmental Management Group (EMG): Yet another layer of coordination bureaucracy. The EMG is chaired by the UNEP Executive Director and includes heads of UN specialized agencies, funds and programs and MEA secretariats.[39] Although a worthy idea, the EMG has not yet lived up to its promise as there has been little high-level political engagement in its work. Reasons for this include too many UN coordination forums for time-constrained senior management (e.g., the Chief Executives Board, the High- Level Committees on Programmes and on Management, the UN Development Group, etc.); the negative perception of the EMG as an instrument for UNEP’s control; and human and financial resource constraints (professional staff of two people and a budget of US$500,000).[40] Most important, there is no clear sense of outcomes for the coordinating that EMG seeks, nor a sense of what different agencies will gain from such coordination. In essence, the EMG not only lacks resources but also clarity of purpose.

Global Ministerial Environment Forum (GMEF) has the potential to become a more effective forum for high-level policy interaction. The GMEF is an annual meeting of national environment ministers to discuss high-level policy issues, which meets as part of the UNEP Governing Council’s regular and special sessions. At GMEF’s first meeting in 2000, the GMEF adopted the Malmo Declaration, calling for the role of UNEP to be strengthened and its financial base broadened and made more predictable.[41] Many argue that the role of the GMEF should be enhanced to become the body through which international environmental policy formulation would take place. The GMEF could also increase interaction among non-state actors and among the pillars of sustainable development through the participation of NGOs and the private sector and by involving ministers from other government sectors in its deliberations.[42]

There is recognition to turn UNEP into a voice for authoritative environmental knowledge. For example, the UNEP Governing Council—as part of the Cartagena process for reform—recently established a “Science Initiative” to strengthen UNEP’s ability to monitor and assess global environmental change.[43] This includes a proposal to create an Environment Watch System as an integrated structure for scientific discussion underpinning international environmental governance. There is also a proposal to create an Intergovernmental Panel on Environmental Change to give scientific and technical advice to the UNEP Governing Council/GMEF. Actions to create greater capacity for scientific assessment in developing countries are also laid in the Bali Strategic Plan for Technology Support and Capacity Building. These activities and the high-level recognition of the importance of strengthening environmental monitoring and linkages between science and policy-making are positive trends underlying which is the belief that GEG needs to be grounded in authoritative science and knowledge.

Only the last two of these five trends are encouraging. Moreover, the meta-trend that emerges from the above is that there is a creeping proliferation of coordination mechanisms. What is needed, it seems, is (a) fewer rather than more coordination forums; and (b) a focus on the means to coordinate with rather than simply the mandate.

Assessment

The call for more cooperation and coordination and the need for a more efficiency is a perennial concern of all who work in or study international organizations. Diplomats easily agree on the need, and the search for better coordination becomes a never-ending saga. The lack of coordination is an easy scapegoat. When it does happen, coordination happens either by command (strong leadership with authority, carrots and sticks) or by consensus (capacity to orchestrate a coherent response and mobilize the key factors around common objectives and priorities), or a combination thereof.[44] Coordination by default (the absence of a formal coordinating entity, but cooperation through the exchange of info) and laissez faire (lack of coordination) are becoming rare, as the international system becomes busier and more involved.

In terms of GEG, discussions of the problem of cooperation and coordination have mainly focused on the nature of UNEP’s mandate, UNEP’s failure to realize it and bodies that would compensate for UNEP’s coordination failure. Adding more layers of coordination and staying in a continuous process of reform has made it more difficult to deal with the problem. Ironically, the GEG system still faces the very same needs that resulted in UNEP’s establishment: there is no common outlook and general policy guidance in the field of environment. This situation is unsustainable because the lack of direction diminishes the overall performance of the GEG and weakens the GEG even further while it is faced with continuous pressure to coordinate with other fields.

To the extent that environmental issues, by their very interconnected nature, require a level of coordination and cooperation, this is a serious problem. And some lessons are quite evident.

The key question is the one of incentives. How can an incentive structure be created so that the key agencies see it in their own interest to coordinate with other institutions? It seems equally obvious that the key to the incentive structure will come not from the institutions but from the Member States who, after all, are the real “owners” and “operators” of all these institutions.

A second point that is evident from this diagnosis is that full coordination of all activities or all actors is neither possible, nor desirable. The goal, then, is to identify the key areas in which coordination is desirable and feasible, and focus our efforts there. It is obvious that UNEP has to have a central role in being the catalyst for cooperation and coordination. However, it is no longer obvious that UNEP alone needs to play this role. The solution may well be in figuring out who can coordinate what best.

It should also be clearly understood that whoever is given the responsibility to coordinate should also be given the means to coordinate. Without that, the mandate is meaningless. As is so often pointed out, in the 1970s and 1980s, UNEP devoted 30 per cent of its annual budget to coordinating environmental activities of other organizations. Currently, the Environmental Management Group (see below) spends over 90 per cent of its US$0.5 million budget on staff salaries and internal operations, and no resources within UNEP’s budget are specifically earmarked for coordination activities.[45]

The challenge of coordination is not limited to coordination between environmental and other institutions, it is also the coordination among environmental institutions (for example, the MEA Secretariats) and, even more important, coordination among the various agencies and actors that are involved in producing knowledge and science that can influence good environmental decision-making.

Finally, the single best opportunity for reform-minded countries to influence this matter is by influencing the choice of future leaders of international environmental institutions, and stating and demonstrating a commitment to GEG system-wide cooperation as a prerequisite to their appointment.

The global environmental governance system has been very prolific in negotiating MEAs but, except for a few exceptions, has a rather dismal record of turning agreements into actual change on the ground in terms of either the quality of the environment or the lives of those who live in those environments.[46] The literature makes rather academic distinctions between implementation (referring to actions parties take to make a treaty operative in their national legal system); compliance (adherence to treaty provisions and upholding the spirit of the treaty); enforcement (methods available to force states to comply and implement MEAs); and effectiveness (the effect of the treaty as a whole in achieving its objective).[47] These are conceptually useful distinctions, but from a policy perspective and in the context of our initial goal, our concern is with performance of international environmental instruments where performance is defined as the sum of implementation, compliance, enforcement and effectiveness. The ultimate test of GEG has to be environmental performance, in that not only must the actual environmental quality be maintained and improved as intended (effectiveness) but the sanctity of the governance instrument must be respected (implementation, compliance, enforcement).[48]

The crux of the challenge here is that the GEG system has been so frantically obsessed with negotiating new agreements that it has paid little attention to whether these agreements perform or not. As discussed above, merely reaching agreement seems to have become the goal to such an extent that a performance focus is nearly entirely absent from the discourse. The system becomes overrun by negotiators and their career and institutional interests, and the very absence of implementers from the GEG discourse can translate into the absence of implementation concerns. Additionally, the seduction of international negotiation can steal away the best human resources, especially in developing countries, so that precious few are left back home to carry out the work of domestic implementation of what the negotiators decide.[49]

Diagnosis

The problem becomes apparent at three interconnected levels: when laws are made (negotiation level); when laws are not complied with and enforcement mechanisms do not exist (global level); and when those implementing laws closest to environmental threats are marginalized (domestic level).

Designing agreements that are doomed to fail. From one perspective, MEAs are condemned to succeed. Environmental negotiators invariably find something to agree upon during those wee hours of the night, right before time runs out. Yet, the very same desire to come to some agreement—any agreement—can lead to agreements that just cannot or will not bring about the environmental improvement (effectiveness) that they were meant to.[50] Reaching agreements may bring instant rewards to negotiators, but agreements can become a success only if states have the intention and capacity to make them work domestically.[51] In too many MEAs, too many countries seem to lack either one or both. Treaty texts are broad, ambiguous and difficult to implement in practice, negotiations tend to end up with measures acceptable to the least enthusiastic party, while eventual free riders are not coerced into action. When agreements are reached, the extent of the financial commitment necessary to make them work may be unclear and often no serious funding is made available. The process of consensus building in MEAs is driven by political feasibility, rather than science, so there is an inherent discrepancy between problems and solutions. The legitimacy and fairness of laws is another concern both in terms of the process of negotiation and its outcomes.[52] Now there is an increasing awareness of deficiencies of the MEA negotiation process and their impact on compliance and regime performance.[53] Still, if we observe environmental processes over time (from Stockholm to Rio and onwards) their evolution may seem slow, but in some cases it may lead to real improvements (e.g., trade in endangered species and ozone depletion).

Lack of global instruments to ensure compliance and enforcement. At the international level, sovereign states need first to give their consent to an enforcement body in order to be made to comply with international laws. Such consent is rare because states fear that their costs outweigh benefits and that institutions could interpret given mandates broader than envisioned. The perceptions of sovereignty are slowly changing and there is strong pressure to act when global commons are threatened.[54] In the absence of means of enforcement or of dispute resolution, environmental regimes have developed under a very different logic from others regimes like, for example, the rule-based trade regime. Environmental regimes are relatively new and predominantly norm-driven where the instrument of compliance is persuasion and assistance; i.e., carrots and carrots. Carrots are particularly well suited in GEG because there is a large discrepancy of effort developed and developing countries need to undertake to make the same rules work in practice, and there is a powerful equity discourse that works against stick-based solutions globally. While responsibilities accepted within environmental regimes may be common, differentiation in practice and compliance expectations is a necessity. For example, while developed countries are pursuing mitigation of environmental threats (reducing their impact), developing countries are still mainstreaming, i.e., ensuring that environmental concerns are integrated at all levels.

Failure to shift focus from negotiation to local level implementation (and the problem of “capacity building”). Environmental improvement depends on looking beyond the basic implementation of the instrument (how many reports have been sent?) to implementation of targets of that instrument domestically (have they been met and, if not, why, and how can they be met?).[55] At the same time it is necessary to identify how regime targets fit within overall countries’ needs. Yet, those who are closest to environmental threats and who are most responsible for implementing MEAs on the ground, seem to be most marginalized and underrepresented in GEG. The whole GEG system has a built-in incentive to negotiate rather than implement: there are few global institutions with a mandate for implementation and negotiators invade the system leaving little space for either implementers or experts. The requirements of the many activities in GEG (negotiating, satisfying treaty requirements, participating at meetings, etc.) both divert national focus from implementation needs and prevent implementation due to shortages of personnel and financial resources. “Capacity building” is pursued as the possible remedy but remains underspecified as a concept[56] while appropriateness of its uses is contested in practice. For example, irrelevant “capacities” being built for irrelevant actors (i.e, training foreign ministry officials in MEA implementation), or redundant capacities being developed (i.e., negotiators being trained repeatedly for more negotiation). However, there is a creeping realization that the first step has to be a determination of which capacities are needed where, and that this assessment has to be done with participation from those whose capacities are being built. This realization has led to some promising initiatives, such as the Bali Strategic Plan for Technology Support and Capacity Building and individual projects like UNEP’s attention on national judiciary capacity building and provision of environmental law training materials.[57]

There are positive aspects of the current state of implementation, compliance, enforcement and effectiveness in GEG. Although the problems in this area are important, there are a number of positive aspects that need to be acknowledged.

There are undeniable MEA success stories and hidden pockets of excellence in performance. The Montreal Protocol on Ozone Layer Depletion is widely cited as a success story in terms of GEG performance: implementation, compliance, enforcement and effectiveness. Moreover, this is a case where the carrot-carrot approach seems to have worked largely due to the presence of a real fund with real resources to disburse in order to bring developing countries to par.[58] Another example is the Antarctic Treaty and its ability, through its 1991 protocol, to bar oil and mineral exploration in the Antarctic for 50 years in a resource-hungry world. CITES is yet another implementation success. A key contributor to CITES’ effectiveness has been its close collaboration with civil society (especially WWF, IUCN and their joint program, TRAFFIC) and the fact that because this is a more mature agreement, countries are more likely to send implementers rather than negotiators to decision meetings.

Good management and enforcement can go hand-in-hand. The traditional views of compliance suggest that states accept only those treaties in their own interest; that they breach them intentionally; and, therefore, coercive action is necessary. On the other hand, management approach proponents say that non-compliance results from capacity limitations and rule ambiguity. Traditionalists tend to recommend tough enforcement, while the latter group recommends capacity building and financial assistance and transparency of rules and actions. The example of the European Union suggests that the two approaches can be combined for best effect and operate at two levels through centralized supervision by EU’s supranational institutions and decentralized supervision, where national courts and societal watchdogs induce state compliance.[59]

Enforcing environmental standards through international and regional institutions shows promise. Over the last decade environment has begun to be mainstreamed into the work of the international institutions including the World Bank, WTO and International Court of Justice (ICJ). Their situation is not ideal, but significant and irreversible progress has been made, for example, through the use of World Bank’s environmental assessments; WTO’s Appellate Body’s environment and trade jurisprudence;[60] and the ICJ’s judgments on environment-related cases that have advanced the meaning of environmental principles and acted as a source of law (e.g., cases on nuclear tests and Gabcikovo-Nagymaros case). Through the EU enlargement, the EU environmental standards are spreading across the European continent and the EU has recently also showed global leadership in making the Kyoto Protocol come to life.[61] Greater regional focus is promising even outside the EU: strengthening regional networks among UNDP, regional commissions and various UNEP regional offices can further move the discussions from global negotiation levels closer towards national implementation.

Trends

Some promising examples of innovative mechanisms to deal with implementation, compliance, enforcement and effectiveness are identifiable and these trends can be built upon.

International environmental law has begun to develop innovative legislative and regulatory mechanisms to improve compliance with MEAs and their implementation. For example, there are moves away from the unanimity/consensus principle and towards qualified majorities in the Whaling Commission as well as in the Montreal Protocol.[62] There are a number of attempts to create Compliance Committees that would function through a plenary, a bureau, a facilitative branch and an enforcement branch. The World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in 2002, began experimenting with voluntary multi-stakeholder partnerships.

Transparency within GEG has been significantly enhanced through increasing use of formal prior informed consent procedures and information exchange provisions in MEAs. For example, the Rotterdam Convention builds on the existing voluntary PIC procedure, operated by UNEP and FAO since 1989, which establishes that export of a chemical covered by the Convention can only take place with the PIC of the importing party. The Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, goes beyond customary law into requirements to negotiate on the possible effects on planned measures on the condition of an international watercourse (notify before implementation and allow states the time to reply.) Finally, the UNECE Convention on the Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention), grants the public rights and imposes on Parties and public authorities obligations regarding access to information and public participation and access to justice. This Convention together with the Protocol on Pollutant Release and Transfer Register, is important in improving government accountability, transparency and responsiveness.

Both in academia and practice there has been an increasing use of qualitative and quantitative indicators of implementation, compliance, enforcement and effectiveness. For example, the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement, in cooperation with OECD, developed a project to assist enforcement agencies in designing compliance and enforcement indicators and using them for agencies’ performance assessments.[63] Similarly, academics have been developing models that target various aspects of regime effectiveness, including conditions for success, effectiveness of regime provisions, behavioural changes or regime impact on the biophysical environment.[64] Although much of this research has not yet been put to use by policy-makers, this move towards empirical analysis is a positive trend that could have high payoffs in the future.

Assessment

Lack of implementation, compliance, enforcement and effectiveness is a common problem in the international system. However, environmental and sustainable development law has two special characteristics: an extreme reliance on soft law, and a great tradition of civil society involvement.[65] While the latter will be discussed later, GEG’s reliance on the dense network of soft laws has had a strong normative dimension. Namely soft law principles have, over time, become norms and expectations of behaviour and eventually hardened, becoming incorporated in treaties.

While the lack of attention on environmental performance is distressing, a case can be made that although this is an important problem, it is not a crisis. It could be argued (a) that environmental regimes are yet young and, as such, are rightly focusing on treaty creation at this stage because treaty performance will follow in time; (b) that the evidence from the successful treaties suggest that over time the negotiators are, in fact, replaced by implementers in the decision-making process and the focus does shift towards performance; (c) that the management approach to implementation which focuses on capacity creation and financial assistance has worked some treaties and, given the time, is likely to work in other environmental regimes; and (d) that environmental regimes have purposely chosen to go down the persuasion path rather than the enforcement path and, over time, normative soft law does harden into expected state behaviour, which most countries do adhere to most of the time.

There is some merit in this argument, but some actions must not be postponed. First, because of the nature of global environmental problems, some means have to be found of getting local and national implementers and their priorities accounted for in the GEG system. Second, while negotiation is important, it must not distract from the challenges of performance. Third, in the absence of enforcement measures in the GEG system, disputes will travel to forums where enforcement is available (for example, trade). This highlights the need to place environment sensibilities into those non-environmental enforcement mechanisms and also of thinking seriously about developing environment compliance mechanisms, even if at a limited level.

Challenge #4. Inefficient Use of Resources

There are many sources of funding for the global environment: multilateral financial flows associated with multilateral organizations; MEAs and multilateral financial mechanisms; debt relief; private capital flows; non-traditional sources of financing; financing via the non-governmental sector; and domestic capital flows. Still, elements of the GEG system remain chronically under-funded and the lack of financial resources is considered to be a key obstacle to treaty compliance, particularly in developing countries.

Inefficiency in the use of the monies that are available is another chronic complaint. Inefficiencies are everybody’s loss: they act as a disincentive for donors to invest in the system, diminish the credibility of the system’s institutions and fail to provide funds to those who need them most. Minimizing inefficiencies through synergies-oriented financial management could produce significant extra funding.

Diagnosis

Criticism of the use of resources in GEG mostly falls under two categories: “not enough money” advocates focus on the lack of funds to cover the needs and on ways to mobilize new funds; and “management failure” proponents suggest that the resources available are not being used well and large sums of money that are available are spread too thinly across a fragmented system. Although the question of just how much money there is in the system is surprisingly difficult to answer, this diagnosis will attempt to take a first stab at it.

There is not enough money where it is needed: Goals are a moving target and voluntary funds are unpredictable. The argument that there is not enough money in GEG is rarely contested because of systematic under-funding of treaty obligations, expanding institutional mandates, increasing environmental threats that need to be addressed or helping overburdened states to participate in the system. There is, however, surprisingly little information available on exactly how much money is invested in the system. However, the fact that there may be a significant amount of money in the system (see below) does not imply that there is enough money to do all that has been promised or is needed. There are, in fact, two kinds of “money questions” related to GEG. The first is about the amounts needed to actually manage the system and its various institutions and activities. The second, related but distinct, is about resources that have been promised, explicitly or implicitly, to developing countries to enable them to take on the commitments that are sought from them.

In terms of the first issues, the problem is not just the amount of money available for the functioning of the GEG system, but also its reliability. Fluctuation of resources is a key problem because of the heavy dependence on voluntary funding. UNEP is a case in point. Although designated as the principal UN policy body in the UN system, it has suffered from budget uncertainty from one biennial budgetary period to the next, unreliable voluntary contributions and donors’ requirements to earmark the money for specific projects or purposes.[66] The primacy of the cash-flow challenge has contributed to UNEP’s short-term focus and its unease with committing to the type of long-term and visionary programs that better fit its mandate.

In terms of the second issue, funding is both needed and was promised when developed countries reaffirmed in Agenda 21 (Chapter 33) their commitment to reach 0.7 per cent of GNP for official development assistance; but only a few delivered. Asking for more money for GEG is also promoting the additionality principle in international law. Pressure from the South for additional funding also holds developing countries together and sets the accountability record straight. The money question, therefore, is seen by developing countries as fundamental to the bargain they had made in agreeing to enter the GEG system; from their perspective it is a bargain that was not kept.

The money that is available is neither managed efficiently nor used appropriately. The challenge is broader than just the question of how much money there is and how reliably it can be accessed. It is also a question of how the available money is used. The GEG system loses money through funding contradictions, overlaps due to GEG fragmentation and lack of synergies between available environment and development funding. Efficiency of the system is also constrained by the lack of transparency in financing for the global environment. The assumption that resources in the GEG system are used inefficiently is widely accepted and there is much anecdotal evidence of it. There is a deep sense that the GEG system spends significantly on keeping the “system” and its institutions going, but relatively little actually gets spent on environmental action. However, the fact that there is very little information on just how much money is flowing through the system and for what purposes, makes pinning the inefficiencies or doing something about them all the more difficult. In the final analysis, the reputation of the GEG system is undermined because it remains unclear whether the resources available within the GEG are being spent wisely, or even ethically.

Because of the fragmented system, there can be duplications and even contradictions in the spending by different elements of the system. For example, the Multilateral Fund of the Montreal Protocol has spent between US$250–300 million[67] promoting HFCs and HCFCs as substitutes for ozone depleting CFCs, but the Kyoto Protocol now targets HFCs and PFCs (also promoted under Montreal) for reduction because of their greenhouse potential.[68] Even when contradictions are avoided, the fragmented nature of GEG necessarily results in fragmentation of funding for similar needs across treaties. For example, as activities of the Global Biodiversity Forum and efforts to cluster chemicals management suggest, potential for financial savings exists through closer cooperation. Savings from joint action could be in areas of capacity building, science and technology, legal and institutional matters, monitoring and reporting, information and awareness-raising, and program support services.[69]

Finally, despite the acceptance of a sustainable development agenda in Rio 1992, there is still a strong environment vs. development divide in financing. This was visible in the lack of interaction between the UN Summit on Financing for Development and the World Summit on Sustainable Development and the continuing failure of international financial institutions to fully redirect their financing and accountability towards the environmental aspects of sustainable development.[70] A sad example of the mismatch between environment and development is the lack of adequate funding for adaptation to climate change in low-lying coastal areas, which fight for their basic survival.

Although not “enough,” there is more money in the system than we might imagine. It is frustratingly difficult to estimate the total amount of money available for environmental activities in the GEG system. But even the most basic back-of-the-envelope type calculations suggest that the system is better endowed than many imagine. This, of course, is not necessarily good news because (a) it is also true that most people would underestimate just how much money it takes to maintain a global governance system, and (b) it suggests that the fragmentation and inefficiency of the system is not allowing us to make best use of these resources. However, on the positive side, it suggests that in a more rationalized system there could be significant cost savings that could be diverted towards much-needed environmental action. Our very preliminary and rough estimation of only the key GEG institutions suggests that the basic funds that are channeled by multilateral institutions, treaty mechanisms, regional development banks and a few key environmental NGOs add up to nearly US$10 billion per annum (see Annex 1). A fuller and more thorough accounting of funds would probably show that the amount is much higher; but, even this amount can be considered significant, since this does not account for the bilateral and national flows of investment into global environmental issues. Our very rough analysis highlights three key points: First, finding out just how much money is flowing through the system—and for what—is a first important step towards putting these resources to better use. Second, significant, but dispersed, investments are in fact being made in global environmental issues. Third, it is not necessarily bad that the money is dispersed to multiple recipients, what one wants is not concentration of resources at a single entity, but better communication and coordination among the multiple recipients.

Besides multilateral funding, other significant funds come from bilateral donors, innovative financing and market-based mechanisms, other NGOs and individual donors. Overall, the GEG system has an impressive array of funding opportunities for a whole variety of activities. The diversity of financial mechanisms has enabled all stakeholders in the system to see what works and when, and in this way move up the learning curve.[71]

Trends

The trends in terms of resource efficiency are mixed, but some positive trends are evident.

There is an active search for innovative funding mechanisms to service the GEG system. Recognizing the need for new models of GEG financing, a number of attempts are underway to seek innovative financing models for environmental protection activities. Among the models discussed are cross-sectoral partnerships; UNDP and the GEF collaboration on innovative modes of concessional lending; the UNEP finance initiative; IUCN’s work on self-sustaining financing mechanisms for conservation of the world’s protected areas; currency-transaction taxes; “topic-specific” global funds; private sector involvement; “debt-for-nature swaps”; search for global markets for public goods; etc.[72] Innovative financing is clearly a necessity because multilateral funding cannot be large enough to realize Agenda 21 and generate sustainable revenue flows to meet the needs of interested local communities. Still, it needs to complement rather than replace development assistance.

Efforts to capture the level of bilateral funding are improving. For example, three markers for biodiversity, climate change and desertification were introduced in the OECD Credit Reporting System (CRS) in 1998, to capture transactions targeting the three conventions. The OECD/CRS provides a snapshot of the funding status of implementation of the three conventions and enables the users to analyze funding trends for specific issues. This system provides the first set of consistent and comparable funding data targeting the three conventions, but it remains criticized for lack of completeness and accuracy of its output.[73]

Global Environment Facility: An experiment in coordinated funding. The GEF is currently the only multi-convention financing entity. Despite its management woes, it does improve funding stability in the GEG and begins to realize the concept of clustering and has an innovative structure for financial decision-making. First, its regular replenishments contribute to funding stability in GEG, enable policy planning and ensure cooperation of developing countries. Second, it achieves synergies at the project level and looks across multiple issues in its decision-making. Third, the GEF adopted a double-weighted majority voting system, which requires a 60 per cent majority of the total number of participating states as well as a 60 per cent majority of the total amount of contributions made to the trust fund of the GEF.[74] The institution is beset with other problems, and the current replenishment negotiations are going poorly, but in terms of a single-window, coordinated funding mechanism it serves a vital purpose.

Towards better resource allocation frameworks? There has been a heated debate on the GEF’s limits when offering financial assistance to developing countries. The participants in the GEF’s third replenishment requested establishing a framework for allocation based on global environmental priorities and on countries’ performance. The framework has been agreed to in principle in September 2005, but it is still unclear how it will work in practice.[75]

Assessment

Inefficient use of resources is a common problem in the international system because of its complex nature, especially the existence of multiple actors and instruments, and lack of central control. Improving resource efficiency and transparency has become a major priority in recent years.[76] For example, the humanitarian field has benefited from the introduction of the Financial Tracking System (FTS),[77] which is a global, real-time database of humanitarian aid, managed by the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. It indicates to what extent populations in crisis receive humanitarian aid, and in what proportion to needs, and helps mobilize responses of national, regional and international relief systems. The GEG system could learn from other fields, especially in terms of developing a financial tracking system.

Investing in the environment is not a key priority for most of the states in the international system, and environmental projects continue to fight for attention. This was again visible at the 2005 World Summit in New York, where the outcome document’s section on “Financing for Development” has no references to environmental issues.[78] Therefore, both the quantity of funding and quality of its allocation are extremely relevant for sustaining the GEG system. The most important aspect of addressing inefficiencies in the use of resources is improving institutional performance in GEG. In the Millennium Report, the UN Secretary-General imagined the UN of the future in a catalytic role: deriving its influence from values it represents, norms it sets and sustains, stimulation of global concern and action and the trust it inspires by practical performance.[79] The GEG of the future should follow this catalytic model.

Currently, the belief that the system is ineffective and wasteful of its resources comes with a heavy reputational price and creates further reluctance among uninterested donors. The problem is, therefore, a serious one and relates to: (a) attracting new resources to the system; (b) better coordinating the use of the resources already available to the system; and (c) creating confidence in the system’s ability to utilize both existing and new resources efficiently in terms of its institutional activities and effectiveness in terms of its substantive environmental activities.

Challenge #5. GEG Outside the Environmental Arena

Many of the most important decisions affecting the environment occur outside the complex web of international treaties and organizations that comprise the formal GEG system. Decisions related to investment, development, and trade affect patterns of natural resource use, production and consumption to, arguably, an even greater extent than the negotiation of MEAs. Security and environment are linked through both the potential for conflict arising from scarcity of natural resources and environmental degradation in conflict zones. Environmental issues are also spilling over into the health arena, as the health risks posed by environmental degradation become increasingly prevalent.

The system of international trade consists of trade rules arising from World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreements and various Regional Free Trade Agreements and their respective dispute resolution mechanisms have particularly deep impacts on global environmental governance. The international system of finance and investment influences long-term national development trajectories through project finance and national economic policy of developing nations. Moreover, there is a large imbalance between trade and financial institutions and environmental institutions. The financial resources and political clout of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and development agencies dwarf those of UNEP and the GEF. It is not surprising that economic priorities often take precedence over the environmental considerations. The key issue facing global environmental governance is how to more effectively mainstream environmental considerations into economic decisions and into other non-environmental arenas.

Diagnosis

That environmental concerns are spilling over into non-environmental arenas is not a “problem.” Indeed, it is an objective. The issue of mainstreaming is about ensuring that the links between environment and other issues are acknowledged and environmental concerns are given due importance in forums, regulations and policies dealing with these other issues.

Trade and environment: friends or foes? No one doubts that trade and environment are closely linked. It is the nature of the link and what should be done about it that remains disputed. Although the primary objective of the WTO is the liberalization of trade, the preamble of the 1994 WTO Agreement recognizes that trade should be conducted “in accordance with the objective of sustainable development, seeking to both protect and preserve the environment.” Nevertheless, the legal obligations and policy priority of the WTO is, and will remain, trade. There has been a long debate about how to deal with environmental issues in the WTO context and in 2001 the Doha Ministerial of the WTO brought the environment directly into the WTO negotiating agenda. Developing countries have remained rather wary of using trade rules for environmental protection. Many developing countries argue that environmental standards that restrict trade are just another form of protectionism. However, others argue that trade can be a powerful tool for environmental protection and point out that trade is also used to promote the protection of other values, such as intellectual property.

Trade is also a frequently used instrument within MEAs. There are approximately 20–30 MEAs containing trade measures, generally restricting trade on certain products between Parties and/or non-Parties.[80] Measures include requirements on reporting trade flows, labelling requirements, permits and licences, export bans or systems of prior notification.[81] Trade measures can be quite effective in providing a means of compliance and enforcement. For example, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) bans or restricts trade in species considered endangered and permits the application of trade sanctions on Parties that do not comply. As of 2000, CITES had applied 17 trade bans, all of which induced the offending countries to return to compliance.[82] Other common trade provisions used in MEAs include hazardous waste trade under the Basel Convention, prohibition of trade in ozone-depleting substances under the Montreal Protocol and restricting the import of some living genetically modified organisms under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. Although this could technically be a violation of WTO rules, the issue has never been brought up before the WTO Dispute Settlement Body.[83]

Integration of environmental considerations into investment and development is crucial to effective environmental governance.International investment rules can restrict the ability of national governments to implement environmental regulations. Although there is no single treaty governing investment rules, myriad bilateral and multilateral treaties exist to facilitate foreign investment and, mainly, to reduce risks faced by investors.[84] Strengthening the rights of investors sometimes comes at the expense of national environmental regulations. Concerns over restrictions on governments to impose environmental and social standards also led to the demise of the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in 1998, which would have significantly strengthened investor rights.[85]

National regulatory frameworks to integrate environmental considerations into private sector investment are often not strong enough. Foreign direct investment flows have significant implications for environmental sustainability in the short and long run. For example, investments in fossil fuel-based energy production can lock in a greenhouse gas-intensive energy strategy for a generation. On the other hand, private sector investment flows are critical to add sustainable energy resources, sounder industrial processes, and better natural resource use. Climate change mitigation, in particular, will require heavy investment into climate-friendly energy technology. Ideally, environmental considerations should be integrated into private sector FDI through national level policies. However, the steep increase in FDI has outpaced the ability of many countries to implement appropriate regulatory frameworks and the desire to attract FDI has even retarded efforts to do so.[86] Even where strong regulations exist, developing countries also lack the capacity to execute effective enforcement.

Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and bilateral aid agencies manage huge portfolios of investment with significant environmental implications. Like private sector investment, MDBs and bilateral aid agencies finance infrastructure and other development projects that impact patterns of natural resource use, production methods, and consumption patterns. Although FDI dwarfs flow from MDBs and bilateral aid agencies, these public financiers exercise a great deal of influence over national policies. The World Bank and the IMF use structural and sectoral adjustment loans that are tied to policy changes. MDBs, the IMF, and aid donors also work closely with developing country governments in providing policy advice and capacity building. However, over the years MDBs have incorporated environmental concerns into their processes and standards, although their critics maintain that more still needs to be done.

Health, environment and human security. Poverty, infectious disease and environmental degradation have been recently defined in a common cluster as threats to international security.[87] Health topics have been moving to central places on the international agenda. It has been argued that the expansion of conventional international health law is emerging as an important tool for multilateral cooperation.[88] Environmental risk factors that greatly affect our health include: unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene, urban air pollution, indoor smoke from solid fuels, lead exposure and others, but key concerns at the global level relate to potential health impacts of climate change arising from increased exposures to thermal extremes, from increases in weather disasters, changing dynamics of disease vectors, etc.[89]

Environment, peace and security. Principle 25 of the 1992 Rio Declaration says: “Peace, development and environmental protection are interdependent and indivisible.” Recent events in the international system reaffirm the importance of this principle. Namely, conflicts over illegal exploitation of natural resources have been discussed at the Security Council level (e.g., Congo and coltan), sudden natural disasters outlined the imperative of sustainable development, climate change has raised serious security concerns over vulnerable populations, millions of climate refugees and their uncertain legal status and eventual destabilization due to reduction of carrying capacity and possible food, water and energy scarcity.

Trends

The general trend in this area is a positive one and points towards greater integration of environmental concerns into other policy areas. However, the pace and extent of such mainstreaming and policy coherence remains a concern.

The WTO is, slowly, coming to accept the trade and environment linkage and there are a number of signs of forward movement, but very slow forward movement. Although the Doha round of negotiations has landed into troubles of its own, that discussion has clearly moved environmental issues from the WTO Preamble directly into the substantive agenda of this and any future negotiations. These negotiations have not yet borne fruit in meaningful ways, but simply by being part of the negotiating agenda they have assumed greater prominence. Importantly, there are serious discussions within the WTO establishing more meaningful working relationships with relevant MEA secretariats.

There are moves towards incorporating environmental objectives into investment agreements. There are approximately 2,500 international investment agreements (IIAs) currently in force, most of which cover certain basic principles and tilt the balance of rights in favour of investors and may conflict with legitimate national exercises of environmental regulation and even the fulfillment of obligations under MEAs.[90] It is being argued that this model for IIAs is outdated and a new approach is necessary to meet the needs of sustainable development and the global economy of the 21st century.[91]

Multilateral development banks and international financial institutions are beginning to develop their own principles and standards for environmental performance and these standards are becoming more robust. Although debates persist about the legitimacy of such standards, the World Bank and other MDBs now apply Environmental Impact Assessments on projects prior to approval. The International Finance Corporation, for example, has recently approved a new set of environmental and social standards. The World Bank has its own established standards, although debates persist about their efficacy. Regional development banks are in the process of updating their standards. These have also led to such standards being developed by the private sector. For example, the Equator Principles is a voluntary initiative by adopted banks to promote better environmental practices. Pressure from NGO groups accusing banks challenging the commercial banking industry for “bankrolling disasters” catalyzed the creation of the Equator Principles, a set of social and environmental principles based on the World Bank and IFC environmental standards.[92] The Equator Principles have been adopted by some of the largest international financial institutions, such as HSBC and Citigroup. These institutions will require their customers to, for example, create social and environmental plans and comply with them.

Assessment

The link between environment and other fields is a reality and it is a positive trend that these linkages are being increasingly acknowledged in multiple forums. The problem, however, is the less-than-satisfactory levels of interaction and cooperation between environment and other arenas. The challenge is also to encourage these other arenas to incorporate environmental linkages more fully and more positively into their policy frameworks.

Cooperation among fields becomes challenging when disputes arise among different bodies of law; this has been the perceived challenge within the trade and environment arena. However, particularly with the Doha Round negotiations, the trade system has begun to acknowledge the importance of environment and there are attempts for the WTO to better coordinate with relevant MEA secretariats. The international system in general has been witnessing a powerful move to law in issue areas like human rights (European Court of Human Rights, International Tribunals and International Criminal Court) and trade (WTO Appellate Body, international commercial arbitration).[93] The GEG system, however, has not followed this trend. Environmental governance systems have been built around the concept of convincing parties of the utility of environmental action and providing them financial and other incentives (e.g., Montreal Fund, etc.) to comply. While such GEG methods are positive, as the environmental field matures, we should also expect the emergence of forums of dispute resolution.

Challenge #6. Non-state Actors in a State-centric System

The debate on environmental governance has largely centred on how to reform a state-centric system of international organizations, multilateral treaties and national government implementation. The shortcomings of GEG are analyzed in terms of the inability of international organizations to coordinate activities and the failure of national governments to implement treaties. As a result, the traditional approach to GEG reform often overlooks the tremendous contribution and increasing involvement of civil society actors and the private sector in international policy-making, capacity building and implementation.[94] NGOs are playing an increasingly large role, not just as stakeholders, but as “motors” of international environmental policy-making through setting agendas, drafting treaties, providing scientific information and monitoring implementation.[95] Local and international NGOs also engage in implementation and capacity building. In addition to the achievements of civil society, great strides have been made in engaging the private sector as partners in development and environmental protection rather than as culprits of environmental degradation.

Although the UN has begun incorporating non-state actors into the GEG system through greater access to policy-making forums and through partnerships, the current state-centric nature of global environmental governance does not allow civil society actors the institutional space to realize their full potential. Rather than analyzing the “problem” of non-state actors, this section examines the “potential” for non-state actors to strengthen environmental governance and work towards sustainable development.

Diagnosis

It is quite clear that civil society and the private sector are important actors within the global environmental governance system, that their importance is growing, and that there is the potential for them to contribute more to the effectiveness of the GEG system.

Civil society plays a key role in GEG. NGOs have played a crucial role in global environmental governance from generating agendas, providing information and research for negotiations, mobilizing public opinion, implementation and monitoring. On a national level, NGOs have been involved in drafting national strategies and regulations and have even served as technical advisors to governmental negotiations.[96] NGOs were key catalysts to the creation of many conventions, including the Aarhus Convention on Public Access, CITES and the Convention on Biodiversity.[97] Even the creation of international environmental organizations, such as UNEP, the GEF and the CSD, were partly due to the active efforts of civil society.[98]

NGOs are important knowledge providers. Organizations such as the World Resources Institute (WRI) and IUCN – The World Conservation Union specialize in providing up-to-date research and data on pressing environmental issues. The Global Environment Outlook, produced by UNEP, is a good example of a formalized collaboration of an international organization and civil society.[99] The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, launched by Kofi Annan, was produced by a partnership of representatives of international conventions, leaders from the private sector and civil society.

NGOs are active in creating international norms. Through awareness campaigns and education, NGOs can apply the political pressure necessary to induce governments to agree to international agreements. For example, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a coalition of 1,400 NGOs from 90 countries, convinced 146 countries to sign a landmine ban at a time when 52 countries were producing landmines and 2.5 million landmines were being laid each year.[100] The vigorous efforts of NGO networks led to the creation of the World Commission on Dams to set norms for greater weighting of environmental and social impacts of dam-building during the financial decision-making process.[101]

NGOs are key implementers of environment and development programs in many developing countries. For example, in Chennai, India, the “Civic Exnoras” associations manage the primary waste collection for half a million people. The Rural Advancement Committee in Bangladesh has a 17,000-member staff that works with more than three million people in rural communities and has established 35,000 schools.[102] Internationally, the coalition of NGOs that form TRAFFIC, the wildlife monitoring network for the 1975 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), plays a critical role in the implementation of CITES.[103] NGOs are deeply involved in implementation of Agenda 21, and their role in capacity building and monitoring is significant.

The Private Sector: From opponents to partners? Businesses have faced both internal and external pressures to become more environmentally friendly. Transnational corporations have long been characterized as culprits of global environmental degradation, moving capital and production to countries with the lowest environmental standards in search of higher profit margins. However, since the 1990s, the UN and some civil society actors have changed tactics by engaging the private sector in partnerships to become part of the solution through voluntary corporate social responsibility. The private sector has also begun to respond with initiatives such as the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD).[104] At the same time, clean technologies are getting cheaper and it has been shown that carefully crafted, moderately demanding regulations can inspire businesses to create profitable, environmentally friendly innovations.[105] A few interesting initiatives are listed here:

The Global Compact. In 1999, at the World Economic Forum, Kofi Annan challenged business leaders to join a Global Compact that would bring together companies with the UN, unions and civil society to support universal environmental and social principles. Launched in 2000, the Global Compact consists of 2,300 participants that have pledged to advance 10 principles related to human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption.[106] The Global Compact is fully voluntary and has no enforcement mechanism.

Voluntary Partnerships. The WSSD in 2002 led to the creation of some 300 new voluntary and non-binding “partnership agreements” between and among governments, the private sector and NGOs.[107] These “Partnerships for Sustainable Development” cover a great diversity of issues including energy, freshwater, science and education, biodiversity, trade, desertification, and poverty eradication and a diversity of functions, such as implementation or policy-making. However, critics argue that little tangible action and implementation has come out of these “Type II” Partnerships.

Environmental Reporting, Voluntary Standards and Environmental Management Systems. An increasing number of businesses have begun issuing environment/sustainable development reports as part of their corporate social responsibility programs. Up to 10,000 corporations publish environmental reports, including 45 per cent of the 250 largest companies in the world.[108] To create a standard for high-quality reporting, a coalition of NGOs, business and international organizations have created the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) which has developed a set of internationally recognized sustainability reporting guidelines.[109] NGOs are often heavily involved in developing such standards and/or in the verification and accreditation process. Notable examples include the Forestry Stewardship Council, a globally accredited standard for sustainable forest management. Companies are also beginning to develop Environmental Management Systems (EMSs), sets of policies defining how a company will manage the environmental impacts of its operations, which often exceed legal requirements for compliance. Many are choosing to implement EMSs that are accredited by the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO’s) 14001 Standard and Europe’s Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS).[110]

Trends

There are a number of trends that can be built upon during the GEG reform process.

NGOs are becoming increasingly involved in international policymaking. The explosion of NGOs into the GEG system began with the Rio Conference in 1992. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) Secretariat began the trend by relaxing the accreditation rules for NGOs to attend the conference. Agenda 21 affirmed that the commitment and genuine involvement of non-state actors is critical to achieving sustainable development goals.[111] Successive world conferences would follow this model, each using its own accreditation process as there were no formally integrated rules for NGOs participating in international conferences.[112] Almost 3,000 NGOs participated in the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). NGOs are a permanent presence at MEA negotiations and many governments have gotten into the regular practice of involving NGOs in their negotiation preparations and sometimes in negotiation delegations; however, such practices vary widely and some governments remain opposed to increased NGO participation on sovereignty grounds.

UNEP’s Global Forum and annual CSD meetings are becoming important venues for state and non-state actors to interact. Both CSD and UNEP have been particularly forthcoming in encouraging their participation at their flagship events. Indeed, especially for the CSD, one of the biggest values of these events is that they bring together state and non-state actors in a setting where dialogue, interaction, networking and mutual learning can happen.

The integration of partnerships into international organizations needs work, but is growing. The need to improve coordination with non-state actors (NGOs and the private sector) is being acknowledged by the UN at the highest levels. A recent report of the Secretary General of the UN describes partnerships as one of the UN's “major innovations” and calls for the UN to move towards a more systematic approach to partnerships with a greater emphasis on impact and sustainability. A few examples of developments in partnership work include:[113] (a) the creation, by the CSD, of an interactive online database of partnerships and partnership fairs being held at CSD sessions; and (b) the creation, by the UNDP, of a Division for Business Partnerships to create the necessary institutional structures, policies and capacity to manage partnerships with non-state actors.

Assessment

There are no silver bullets. Neither NGOs nor the private sector are substitutes for government action.

NGOs are by no means a panacea or replacement for government regulations and programs, but they play a key role as catalysts, partners and innovators in GEG. NGOs are not the answer to all the problems of global environmental governance. Civil society organizations are just as susceptible as governments to issues of legitimacy, transparency and accountability.[114] Similarly, there are limits of voluntary action by the private sector in the absence of government regulation. Voluntary corporate social responsibility and codes of conduct are seen as important tools for environmental governance, but voluntary action has limitations. Critics argue that many voluntary codes are little more than public relations ploys. Voluntary codes are often declarations of vague business principles and lack independent performance monitoring. Others further argue that the sustainability partnerships and the Global Compact are “green wash” and a mechanism through which states can avoid making binding commitments.[115] At the same time, it is becoming clear that businesses have started turning from opponents to partners and NGOs have become much more than stakeholders: they are driving the agenda at the national and international level and acting as “civic entrepreneurs,” i.e., experimenting with new ways of affecting social change, which can then be scaled up by government and the private sector.[116]

In a number of areas, including the environment, there is the emergence of global public policy networks (GPPNs), or non-hierarchical, multicultural partnerships that bring together governments, international organizations, corporations, and civil society.[117] The emergence of GPPNs results from the realization that civil society on the one hand and the private sector on the other have important roles to play but so does government. Each has comparative advantages which need to be nurtured: governments with their legitimate right to make and implement regulations; the private sector with its ability to use market forces; and civil society with its nimbleness and commitment to values. None of these can be a silver bullet, and the ideal condition is where each operates to its strengths and in concert with the others. The problem, to the extent that there is one, is that the GEG system remains a predominantly state-centric system and has not evolved to allow for this sort of concerted action.

There are a number of institutional impediments preventing partnerships with business and civil society from realizing their full potential. In many UN organizations, partnership work remains “at the institutional fringes, conducted parallel to, but disconnected from, the main lines of work.”[118] UN bodies often do not have resources available specifically for partnership work and legal hurdles contribute to time lags in implementing partnerships. Furthermore, there is a need for greater transparency and consistency in partner selection and a mechanism for systematic and comparable assessment of partnerships. The integration of non-state actors into intergovernmental GEG institutions has generally happened on an ad hoc basis. Consequently, there is now a need to re-examine institutional structures, which were created to serve a state-centric system, and formalize mechanisms for allowing partnerships with non-state actors to reach their full potential.

^ Kingsbury, B., 1999. “Foreword: Is the Proliferation of International Courts and Tribunals a Systemic Problem?” Journal of International Law and Politics, Volume 31, Number 4: 678–696. – Treves, T., 1999. “Conflicts between the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the International Court of Justice.” Journal of International Law and Politics, Volume 31, Number 4.

^ UNEP/POPS/INC.6/INF/18 Preparation for the COP Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for an Internationally Binding Instrument for Implementing International Action on Certain Persistent Organic Pollutants” in Geneva, June 17–21, 2002 “Clustering of chemicals/wastes multilateral environmental agreements” Note by the secretariat, April 2, 2002, available at www.pops.int/documents/meetings/inc6/englishonly/INC6INF18.doc

^ UNEP/POPS/COP.1/INF/2 – Possible arrangements for a joint head of the secretariats of the Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions.

^ Chambers, W. B., 2005. “From Environmental to Sustainable Development Governance: Thirty Years of Coordination within the United Nations.” In Reforming International Environmental Governance: From Institutional Limits to Innovative Reforms. Edited by Chambers,W. B. and Green, J. F., 13–39. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.

^ United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in June 1972, the General Assembly, in resolution 2997 (XXVII) of 15 December 1972.

^ Von Moltke, K., 2005. “Clustering Multilateral Environment Agreements as an Alternative to a World Environment Organization.” In A World Environment Organization: Solution or Threat for Effective Environmental Governance? Edited by Biermann, F. and Bauer, S., 173–202, Aldershot: Ashgate.

^ Kille, K. J. and Scully, R. M., 2003. “Executive Heads and the Role of Intergovernmental Organizations: Expansionist Leadership in the United Nations and the European Union.” Political Psychology, 24(1): 175–198. – Thakur, R., Cooper, A. F. and English, J., (eds.) 2005. International Commissions and the Power of Ideas. Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Accessed in March, 2006.

^ United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 2001. International Environmental Governance: Report of the Executive Director. UNEP/GCSS.VII/2. The Governing Council of UNEP, Seventh Special Session in Cartagena, Colombia, February 13–15, 2002. Also UNEP/IGM/1/2 of April 4, 2001.

^ United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 2001. International Environmental Governance: Report of the Executive Director. UNEP/GCSS.VII/2. The Governing Council of UNEP, Seventh Special Session in Cartagena, Colombia, February 13–15, 2002. Also UNEP/IGM/1/2 of April 4, 2001.

^ Chambers, W. B., 2005. “From Environmental to Sustainable Development Governance: Thirty Years of Coordination within the United Nations.” In Reforming International Environmental Governance: From Institutional Limits to Innovative Reforms. Edited by Chambers, W. B. and Green, J. F., 13–39. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.

^ United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 2001. International Environmental Governance: Report of the Executive Director. UNEP/GCSS.VII/2. The Governing Council of UNEP, Seventh Special Session in Cartagena, Colombia, February 13–15, 2002. Also UNEP/IGM/1/2 of April 4, 2001.

^ United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 2001. International Environmental Governance: Report of the Executive Director. UNEP/GCSS.VII/2. The Governing Council of UNEP, Seventh Special Session in Cartagena, Colombia, February 13–15, 2002. Also UNEP/IGM/1/2 of April 4, 2001.

^ United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 2004. UNEP/GC.23/6: International Environmental Governance: Report of the Executive Director and Bali Strategic Plan for Technology Support and Capacity-Building: Report of the Executive Director: UNEP/GC.23/6/Add.1. The Governing Council of UNEP/Global Ministerial Environment Forum, Twenty-third Session in Nairobi, February 21–25, 2005.

^ UNEP/POPS/INC.6/INF/18 Preparation for the COP Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for an Internationally Binding Instrument for Implementing International Action on Certain Persistent Organic Pollutants” in Geneva, June 17–21, 2002 “Clustering of chemicals/wastes multilateral environmental agreements” Note by the secretariat, April 2, 2002, available at www.pops.int/documents/meetings/inc6/englishonly/INC6INF18.doc.

^ For learning from experience with financial mechanisms see UNEP/FAO/RC/COP.2/10 and Annex “Study on Possible Options for the Establishment of a Financial Mechanism for the Implementation of the Rotterdam Convention,” May 25, 2005.

^ Miles, K., 2005. “Innovative Financing: Filling in the Gaps on the Road to Sustainable Environmental Funding.” In Review of European Community and International Environmental Law, 14 (3). Blackwell Publishing.

^ Toulmin, C. and Bigg, T., 2004. Financing for Environment and Development. International Institute for Environment and Development. Accessed in March 2006. – Xiang, Y. and Meehan, S., 2005. “Financial Cooperation, Rio Conventions and Common Concerns.” In the Review of European Community and International Environmental Law, Volume 14, Issue 3.

^ Najam, A., 1999. “World Business Council on Sustainable Development: The Greening of Big Business or a Greenwash?” Yearbook of International Co-Operation on Environment and Development, 1999/2000. Pages 65–75. London: Earthscan.